Fatberg: Material Ecologies and the Complexities of Waste

Abstract

A vast, invisible underground sewer network extends beneath the ground surface of most cities and towns, connecting home, work and everyday infrastructures. Within this network exist complex flows and ecologies. It is here that the fatberg has emerged, an indicator species bringing forth the environmental tendencies of the infrastructure system from within. The fatberg is incrementally grown to consume the excess of our everyday lives, transforming into a living entity. In this paper, we explore the phenomenon of the fatberg as simultaneously a residue, symptom, and material being that exposes the inextricable amalgamations of infrastructure, lifestyle products, human by-products, matter, movement and time. As a complex aggregation of the city, the fatberg defines a landscape that evades description and representation in simple picturesque terms as such, it’s story is told through multiple narratives from both a position ‘within’, and ‘outside’, the ecosystem. The phenomenon of the fatberg highlights a consideration of “these strange forms of nature as a material endemic to architecture and cities, as opposed to an aberration that must be consolidated, removed, or dismissed.” (Gissen in Subnature: Architecture’s other environments: Atmospheres, matter, life, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2009 [1])